Strength training, resistance training, weight training or simply lifting weights is something that everyone should do. No matter your age, gender and goal you need to do strength training. Strength training has plenty of benefits asides from helping you look like a Greek God/Goddess.
Strength training strengthens your bones, tendons and ligaments. It helps you do day to day tasks easier. Most importantly, weight training helps maintain your bone density so that as you age, you are less likely to suffer from common issues. Issues such as body pains and falls.
Today’s article will look at 5 of my best tips for strength training. Beginners will benefit greatly.
Give it a read! If you have any further questions, send me a message in the enquiry page!
Basics work best
Strength training is simple. Pick a few exercises that target each muscle group. Set your training schedule in a way that allows you to hit each muscle group at least once a week. Focus on correct technique, improving on those exercises for 6-8 weeks and trying to increase weights and reps. After 6-8 weeks, make minor changes to the exercises you’ve chosen (change barbell bench press to dumbbell bench press), and repeat the process. The cycle continues, forever. That’s strength training in a nutshell. That’s good, simple strength training.
Focus on compound movements
Compound movements are exercises that target multiple muscle groups. An example of compound exercises are squats, bench press, deadlifts, shoulder press, and hip thrusts. You should focus the majority of your workouts on compound movements. They are the best bang for your buck exercises. Compound exercises will help you grow muscles and strength effectively compared with isolation exercises.
Isolation exercises, as the name suggests, isolates a muscle. An example of these are bicep curls, triceps extension, leg extension and leg curls. Isolation exercises have their place in your workout program. However, they shouldn’t be the sole exercises you are doing.
I would recommend setting up your training program order as follows: compound exercises first, followed by isolation movements. Compound exercise will take the most energy to complete, so logically, you should do them first. Isolation exercises aren’t as tiring so do them at the end.
Sample training program:
Upper Body Day.
Bench press (compound exercise)
Pull ups (compound exercise)
Seated dumbbell shoulder press (compound exercise)
1-arm dumbbell row (compound exercise)
Triceps extension (isolation exercise)
Biceps curl (isolation exercise)
Lateral dumbbell raise (isolation exercise)
Train 3-4 days a week, not 7.
Muscles repair and grow when you are RESTING. When you strength train, provided you are training at the right intensity, your muscle fibers are being broken down. It takes adequate rest and nutrition for those muscles to grow back bigger and stronger. If you are training everyday, your body may not get any rest and recovery. Thus, your muscles won’t reach their full potential.
Another good reason for using a 3 or 4 day training split is to save time. For us mere mortals, we don’t have time to be training all day everyday, 24/7. A 3 to 4 day a week training schedule gives you flexibility in being able to get your training days in during the week. Below I’ll give you options on how you can set up a 3 and 4 day training plan. Let’s get to it!
3-day a week training split
Full body every other day. In this setup, you will train every second day. This setup will see you train Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Resting Tuesday and Thursday. OR whatever days work for you. The rule is to have at least one day off in-between each workout.
This setup is good if you are a beginner focussing on compound exercises. In order to master correct technique, you need to practice the movements frequently. Full body every other day helps you do that. As long as you manage recovery and intensity, this setup will work for you.
Push/Pull/Legs. Since you are training non-competing muscle groups, you can train 3 consecutive days. Monday can be a push day. Tuesday is Pull day. Wednesday is Legs. Or you can have a day off in between each day.
This setup allows you to focus on one movement pattern per workout. This would be the setup I recommend after you’ve done a few months of full body and need to organize your training split differently to manage your fatigue.
Upper/Lower/Full Body. This set-up allows you to train each, or most, muscle groups twice a week. You can do Upper body on Monday. Lower body on Tuesday. Rest Wednesday then do full body on Thursday.
These are just a few options, there are many more. Don’t get bogged down. Pick a set up and go for it! I would suggest you start your training week on the same day every week. For example, Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Rest over the weekend then start again. You can start the next week on Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday. Whatever works for you. I prefer the “start the training week on the same day” as I’m sure things will come up during the week which will prevent you from sticking to the schedule. In this way, you just train the next available day.
If you set up a 3 days a week split, you have 7 days to do it. So if sh*it happens, completing your training should be manageable.
4-days a week training split
Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower. This is a great set up for most optimal gains. You’ll train each muscle group twice a week. A good set up is Upper/lower, rest a day, then do upper/lower again.
This is the best setup for most people once they’ve spent a few months learning proper technique. I like this setup, and do it myself, because you hit each muscle groups twice at a high enough intensity to stimulate muscle and strength.
Push/Pull/Legs/Full body. This setup will also see you train each muscle group twice a week.
See above, under 3-day a week training split, for summary.
Sets, reps and rest
A common mistake people make is “junk volume”. Junk volume is doing a sh*t load of sets and reps, thinking it’s how you make gains because you saw Ronnie Coleman do it. For us mortals, not on a cocktail of performance enhancing drugs, we need a lot less volume than you think to get strong and build muscles. Below is a guideline on how many sets and reps you should do.
Warm up sets: You can’t skip the warm up sets. Warming up is like foreplay, you can lift without it but it enhances the experience ;). Your warm up sets should be your first exercise, which as we discussed above should be a compound exercise. Do 3-5 sets, depending on how heavy you are going. No need to go overboard with reps.
For example, you are benching 60kg today. Your Warm up sets can look like this: Warm up set 1: 20kg, 5 reps. Warm up set 2: 40kg, 4 reps. Warm up set 3: 50kg, 3 reps. Then you start your working set.
*A note on warm up sets: Don’t just blindly go through your warm up set to tick a box off. Use your warm up sets to gauge how your body is feeling for the day. Like the Australian Strength Coach says “treat your workout like your top set”. Using this mindset allows you to practice the form you are going to be using for the day.
Working sets: The sweet spot for most is 3 sets. Anywhere between 2-5 sets is good. Reps for working sets depends on the exercise being done. For compound exercise, 5-8 reps is a good range. For isolation exercise 8-12 is good.
Let’s put it together. After you’ve done your 3 sets of warm up with the bench press using the method outlined above, you are going to do your working set. 3 sets of 5 reps at 60kg. Afterwards you follow above with cable flys for 3 sets of 10 reps.
Rest Periods: In order to maximize strength output, you need to rest adequately between sets. For compound movements, rest between 2 to 3 minutes. Isolation exercises rest time can be between 1 minute to 1.5 minutes.
A good guideline is to wait till your heart rate goes back to normal before going again. Trust me, if you lift heavy enough, or do a lot of reps, you’ll feel like you’ve just ran a 100m, Usain Bolt speed.
Technique, Technique, Technique!
It’s so important I wrote it 3x in the title!
Learning proper technique is the key to long lasting fitness. You can “just” lift weights OR you can do it properly and reap the rewards.
A saying that I love, which I learned from The Australian Strength Coach is “You need to earn the right to add weights to the bar”. By “the right” he means technique should be 100%, before increasing the weight.
The human body is interesting. When you take it through movements, your body will do the movement the easiest way possible. Take walking. Say there’s something wrong with your left leg. You’ll notice you’ll be walking more on your right leg. That’s the body's safety mechanism being put to play- avoid the weak side, use the strong side. In working out, that will involve using the strongest muscle groups.
Let’s take a mid back row. IF you spend your days in front of a computer with poor posture when you row your shoulders might shrug up towards your ear. This will work your trap muscles and will not work your mid back muscles much. If you know proper technique, you know to set up with an upright posture, relax your traps and focus on bringing your shoulder blades together to do a row.
You can do an exercise or do it properly and reap the benefits below!
Proper technique helps you:
Greatly reduces your chances of getting injured (it doesn’t completely eliminate injury risk to 0, but close to it). Injuries suck and can take you away from lifting for a long time. Getting the motivation to train again can be annoying. So, learn the correct technique to minimize your chances of getting injured!
Ensures you are using the correct muscle groups. In an ideal world, when you squat, for example, your body will automatically use the correct muscles. But, in today’s day and age, that’s not always the case. Learning correct technique will allow you to know which muscles you are using and HOW to activate those muscles.
An example of this is squats. Some will use too much knee. Some, too much hips. A proper squat uses an equal amount of knee and hip bend.
Slow and steady wins the race!
Strength training is a slow game. Beginners and people coming back to training after some time off, will experience a few months of “Newbie gains”. “Newbie gains” means you progress quickly. You can increase weights faster than you normally would. This, unfortunately, only lasts a few months. After a few months, you’ll be at a slow and steady pace.
Don’t be sad when this happens. It's just how it is. An analogy commonly used is if you increase your squat by 2.5kg a week over 52 weeks, that’s an increase of 130kg!! The weight increases can be as low as 2.5kg per month, that's still 30kg a year. When you get to a heavy enough weight, that 30kg can seem enormous, trust me.
Proper technique and execution also takes time to master. That’s why you should adopt the mindset of “slow and steady” wins the race!
Summary
Strength training is a great and necessary thing to do regularly. Especially as you age, your body gets weaker. That’s just how life is. Falling is one of the biggest ways older people get injured. If you strength train regularly you help minimise the chances of falling in your later life.
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